new frock
Some wear ‘hearts on their sleeves’, I am hoping to wear ‘leaves’ – on my skirt this summer. The print is from local eucalyptus and cotinus I did last year on a lovely medium weight silk. I cut it into wide strips and made several samples from which I was able to construct the skirt this week. I still have plenty left and can’t wait to turn it, possibly to a tunic/dress.
I have sewn few other things for the girls, spun a short length of a fibre, but in general life has been very busy and I have very little time for creativity these days. I feel peaceful about it though, just quietly waiting for a change.
cowls & life
A couple more cowls made, this time in terracotta brown/red, one lightweight, one chunky, both slightly bigger than the previous ones. Now as we have welcomed summery weather in UK and it seems we can possibly put our winter jackets and boots to rest for few months I am thinking fabric more than wool. It’s a pleasant change, both for the body and the mind. So in the next few weeks I will be sewing more than felting and if felting than I hope to do it very spontaneously, without thinking too much, which leads usually to no felting at all.
The school year is almost over and I am looking back. At times I have found it challenging to focus on creativity. Our children have reached the age when we need to decide which country we are going to settle in & they are going to do their further studies. There has been a lot of thinking and discussing done and still is…
merino+soy fibre
rain.drops
and there is more natural dyeing going on here
1. soaking euca leaves 2. struggling indigo seedlings 2. straining onion skin dyebath 4. ice-flower dyeing with red cabbage 5. acer waiting to be planted, will maks nice prints when bigger and stronger 6. yellow dye drop
and it would be much more enjoyable hadn’t it rained so often
lichen – progress
I am still extracting dye from Xanthoria parietina, yellow wall lichen. Here is the color right now, deep red with pinkish hint, perhaps more like a raspberry juice. I started this jar on April 21st and will wait till the end of May and then dye. I have got another three jars set up, the colour of the liquid in them quickly cought up with this first one, but there are slight differences, one jar more towards terracotta red, one deep redcurrent red. I can’t open the four jars inside because of the pungent smell and can’t leave them outside because of a very cold weather so it’s more complicated to aerate the mass inside. I now stir it only 1-2 max 3 times a day and all seams to work just as well as when I did it more often. I get a feeling it’s more warmth which matters and to ensure that I have one jar on the radiator and three in a ‘water bath’ – sitting in a pot filled with water which I occasionally heat up.
grey
I have been absent from here as our PC went completely dead last week. We thought we were buying quality when buying an Apple mini mac less than 2 yrs ago. The keyboard was broken when we brought it home. The DVD drive broke within one year, even though we hardly used it and the whole mini box gave up now. Bye, bye Apple, never again.
I lost some of my photo files, but the most important ones I uploaded on the internet before this happened. I have been net:working again. I like to go back to my technique and see if there is any potential for improvement. The scarves might look all the same, yet they are different, especially in their weight & how loose/dense the structure is. I have always been very attracted to structure and distressed surfaces and like to explore what is possible to create in this area with fibre: I like lines and holes and positive/negative space and sometimes, as I am making the scarves/cowls wonder if it means something or tells something about myself.
The following scarves/cowls are made of beautifully soft, naturally colored merino blended with silk with addition of virgin wool, silk, kid mohair or small amount of acrylic yarn; various yarns give various effects. I guess scarves are more popular than cowls, but I personally love wearing cowls, I find them more snuggly and they don’t ‘dangle’ when I bent or fly all around me in wild winds, so common here in Scotland. It might be strange for some of you to see me making woolly scarves in the middle of May, but the winter isn’t really gone, with temp rarely above 10 degrees, strong northenly winds and plenty of rain there has never been a better time for a good woollen scarf. And since the summer is busy and I usually don’t have time/space to work with fibre much, I am preparing ahead for the autumn, to have few new things in the shop.
Talking about networking and connecting - from now on I will be posting all my fibre related posts/information on my Facebook page red2white only. I rarely post about personal stuff and I just wish to simplify things, there is no hidden agenda behind this. Thank you very much to all of you who have already liked it.
linen
Linen from Belarus. I like the darkest the most. They are all different weight, the bottom one very heavy, the rest would be good even for dressmaking. I couldn’t wait for them to arrive and when I opened the parcel I realized again how much I love natural – materials and colors. And fabrics.
This ebay shop is another irresistable place for linens and wools.
